


Tell Me Honestly

by TinCanTelephone



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Trust Issues, Verrrry slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-03-24 03:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13802784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinCanTelephone/pseuds/TinCanTelephone
Summary: In the aftermath of their rescue from Scarif, Cassian’s recovery is slow and difficult. Jyn struggles with the decision to join the rebellion.Trust may go both ways in theory, but that’s easier said than done.





	1. All That's Left

**Author's Note:**

> Aka the super-angsty slow-burn somebody-lives AU :) 
> 
> Excuse my SW-universe related inaccuracies. I'm doing my best.

It feels like a miracle when Jyn opens her eyes in the too-bright light of a medbay. It smells like bacta and disinfectant and she can hear the whir of droids and the footsteps of medics beyond the curtain that surrounds her bed. She doesn't remember the last time she woke up someplace this clean, or this white. It's almost blinding, but when she closes her eyes again all she can see is Scarif– stumbling out of the data tower with Cassian heavy on her shoulders and Bodhi screaming at them from another stolen ship.

The open cargo hold looked like the gaping maw of a beast, but Jyn almost cried when it swallowed them and surged upwards, plowing desperately through the atmosphere as the ground rippled and crumbled far below them. Jyn's ears popped with the change in pressure as she knelt, shaking, with Cassian in her lap. His eyes closed before he slumped onto the durasteel and they refused to reopen. She could feel his heart fluttering under her fingers, beating too fast like the wings of a convor, and she could hear his halting, stuttering breaths. Her neck cramped from bending over him, and she could feel fatigue beginning to take her as well, but she fought to stay awake and watch him, as if she could will him to stay alive.

She can't remember now if she succeeded, everything after landing on Yavin is a blur. She can't tell how long it's been since then, but by her standards, probably too long. She sits up slowly and tests her limbs. Nothing creaks or clicks, not even her ankle, which was throbbing when they fled. She walks to the curtain on shaky legs and peers beyond it.

She starts and her heart pounds when she sees Bodhi, alive and awake in a bed across the room. The room beyond the curtain is even whiter and Jyn doesn't trust it– she doesn't trust things to be so clean, so perfect. She wants to retreat, pretend to go back to sleep and think of a way to escape, to run. If she can find the landing pad, she can steal onto a transport, a big one with a small crew, where they'd never notice a stowaway…

But she lingers too long at the curtain and her eyes meet Bodhi's. He doesn't call out to her, but he smiles and seems to reach out. She pushes the curtain aside and weaves unsteadily between the white-clad medics to join him.

"You're alive." He grasps her hand with surprising strength.

She returns his grip. "How long as it been?"

"Three days," he says. "Jyn, we made it." His eyes are shining. They must've put him in bacta.The new burn scars on the left side of his face are faint and marks at his temples from the Bor Gullet have faded.

"We did." She drops her eyes back to the sheets. "Bodhi, where's… Chirrut and Baze?" She loses her nerve halfway through and fails to ask about the question she means to. But she already knows the answer to this one.

"Th-they didn't make it." His stutter returns and his hands become restless under hers. "They were dead before I stole that cargo ship. I– I couldn't… I could only find…"

"It's okay," she says, even though it's not. It's not okay that she led Chirrut and Baze and a dozen other rebel soldiers to their deaths, and it's not okay that she gets to live.

"Jyn… about Cassian…"

She braces herself. _He's dead. They couldn't save him. You couldn't save him_.

"He's alive– l-last I heard."

She feels like her knees might collapse under her. "Last you heard?"

He blushes. "I- I've been eavesdropping. He's… s-somewhere else. I don't know. Th-they say a lot I don't r-recognize…"

"It's okay, it's okay." She squeezes Bodhi's hands one more time and steps away, jaw set. "I'll be right back." Cassian didn't fall and then climb back up a kriffing data tower to die. He didn't _come back for her_ just to die. And if his heart's still beating, she will find him and make it stay that way. And the Emperor can take whoever stands in her way.

 

Loathe to walk around in her white hospital gown, Jyn swipes a set of scrubs and begins to explore the medbay. The strength in her legs is returning with the movement and she keeps her shoulders straight. Saw taught her that if you walk with enough confidence, people won't question you. She's found this works especially well on military bases.

However, good posture doesn't always work on droids, and she's stopped at the door labeled _bacta tanks_.

"Identification." The 2-1B blocks the door with a creaky mechanical arm.

"Alya Straith," Jyn says. "I'm new. Don't have my ID yet."

The droid remains unmoved. "Identification."

"Don't have it on me." Jyn tries to plow through the droid again but it clamps a metal hand over her arm and she yelps.

"Identification."

" _Fine_." She takes a deep breath to keep herself from bringing a knee to its mainframe. "I forgot it in my room. Let me go and I'll get it."

The droid considers this. "Allowed."

He lets her go and Jyn takes a few steps back before spinning around, darting out of the way of its arm and through the door to the bacta tanks. She hears it sound some sort of alarm but she doesn't care, just looks the dark room, lights glowing in the green, viscous liquid filling four tanks. They're all empty, but the logs at the base of each one will tell her who's been in them.

She slices into the first one in no time at all and begins scrolling through its history. Her eyes skim the names back and forth, stopping at every _A_. She's so absorbed in her search she doesn't hear the door slide open behind her and doesn't notice the other sentient in the room until she feels a hand on her shoulder.

Instinctively, she whirls and a fist slams into a soft, human diaphragm behind her. She takes several steps backwards to focus on her target, then relaxes when she sees the medic doubled over and wheezing, rusty bangs falling into her eyes.

"You're not– supposed to be here," she chokes.

"I'm looking for someone," Jyn says. The medic is still coughing and trying to get her breath back. Jyn feels a little bad about it, but not bad enough to step forward.

"Who?" the medic says when she can straighten. Her badge says _Kana_ and her accent is core, from Alderaan perhaps, or Corellia.

"Cassian Andor," Jyn says. "Captain," she adds, because maybe that matters.

Kana produces a datapad and begins tapping on it. Her eyes flick suspiciously back up to Jyn every so often, like she's afraid of another attack. "He's in intensive care," she says. "No visitors."

Jyn's teeth clench. "I need to see him." She needs more than the records on a datapad. She needs to _know_ Cassian's okay.

Kana stiffens. "Visitors are not allowed in intensive care, just like here. You need to leave."

"Not until you let me see him."

Kana's face darkens. "I can have you forcibly removed."

"You can try."

There's a brief stand-off. Jyn tries to look threatening, like she's prepared to fight again. They both know she would easily prevail if it came to that, but it turns out Kana's not so easily intimidated and stands her ground.

They're interrupted with a _ping_ on Kana's datapad. She glances down to read it and all the blood drains from her face. When she looks back up, all the fight gone.

"What is it?" Jyn snaps. Was it about Cassian? What could've happened?

Kana shakes her head. "I have to go," she says. "You can't stay here but I can't– a droid will come and get you."

She turns abruptly and leaves, and Jyn stays frozen in confused horror as the same message comes up on every holoprojector on the walls.

**_As of 3:35:5, the Empire has utilized the battle station known as the Death Star. Alderaan has been destroyed._ **

She's still staring at it when the 2-1Bs close in on her and press a stimpack into her neck.

 

When she wakes up, there's a sour taste in her mouth and the back of her throat that doesn't go away when she swallows. She feels numb, past grieving, past heartbroken. Somehow, they failed. The Rebellion never got the plans, the Empire used her father's weapon. She can't imagine it. A whole planet just– _gone_. Billions of lives ripped apart, just like that. With an order and the press of a button.

There's a sound to her left and she turns her head. Bodhi's sitting there, in a hard medbay chair, pale and staring at his lap.

"We failed him," she says, without thinking.

Bodhi takes an unsteady breath and presses shaking hands to his chin. "He n-never… never meant for it to be used…"

"I wish I could've been with him." It's stupid. It's useless to wish something like that. But it all rushes over her again. That he was alive for all those years, that he was a good man, and he loved her. "I never got to know him." Her eyes are burning and wet, but she can't stop it. "What– what was he like?"

Bodhi's hands move to his temples, worrying the scars from the Bor Gullet. "The first time I met him, he came to oversee a shipment of parts." His voice is muffled by his arm but Jyn can hear him. "And he asked me my name. And how I was. Things no one had asked me in so long…"

Bodhi's narrative is non-linear and full of tangents. He drifts off, sometimes, into stories about Jedha, or his mother, but she closes her eyes and focuses on it, and not the screams of Alderaanians she can almost hear in her head.

 

* * *

 

She and Bodhi are released later that day, or early the next. Yavin 4's medbay is underground, so it's hard to tell. They see the high council and Mon Mothma offers them official positions in the Alliance. Bodhi accepts– this is what he wanted, where he belongs. He's used to the structure, the rigidness of military life.

But she can't bring herself to say yes. The words feel stuck in her chest, stuck on the memory of who _really_ killed her father, and who refused to sanction the mission to Scarif.

She's assigned temporarily codebreaking, to keep her busy while she's here. It's a magnanimous gesture of trust, granted by Mon Mothma and a tight-lipped Draven. The Chancellor argues that the Alliance should be taking full advantage of her abilities as a slicer, but Jyn can tell Draven doesn't quite believe she won't somehow try to undermine them, if she has access to his precious intelligence secrets.

Perhaps another time, she would hack into his juiciest-looking files just to fuck with him, prove she's not under anyone's thumb, but she can only sit at the holo for a few restless minutes before leaving. The corridors are lined with grey-faced soldiers, the shock of Alderaan still in their eyes and shoulders.

They look like the hope has been beaten out of them, and even though there's a rumor that the Princess is alive, somehow, and free, Jyn can tell no one really believes it. She doesn't really believe it herself. Or she doesn't want to, in order to save herself the disappointment.

Without really thinking about it, she finds herself back in the medbay, scanning the too-white rooms for a shock of black hair and, if she's lucky, a pair of dark eyes.

 

Jyn doesn't generally consider herself lucky, so she's disappointed, but not surprised, when she finds Cassian asleep. He's no longer in intensive care, but he's still hooked up to multiple machines and there's a drip in his arm. He's sleeping the sleep of the medically sedated, which reminds her of a corpse.

There's movement in her peripheral vision and Jyn jumps, barely keeps herself from lashing out physically.

It's Kana, the medic from before. She flinches but holds her ground. "I'm glad you found him." Her eyes are red and her mouth is turned down.

Jyn remembers her accent, wonders if she's from Alderaan. She doesn't answer, afraid of what her voice will sound like.

"They think he'll be okay," Kana says.

"Good," Jyn manages. He doesn't look like he'll be okay. She flexes her hands on the end of his bed, trying to release some of her nerves. It doesn't seem fair. They barely know each other, and he's sacrificed so much. She looks down at the chart on the foot of his bed. It's cluttered with text, mostly words she doesn't understand.

Kana sees her looking. "Do you want me to… tell you what it means?"

She's stepped closer, but Jyn doesn't turn. She keeps her eyes on Cassian's face, grey and so, so still. "Sure."

Kana peers at the screen. "He came in bleeding internally and with a badly punctured lung. He had surgery for both of these…" Kana scrolls down. "…They removed his spleen and fixed the lung, but then he was rushed to a second surgery on his spine. They repaired four cracked vertebrae but found the spinal cord intact. Subsequent bacta treatment relieved residual swelling. They expect no long-term nerve damage."

Jyn can't stop staring at his chest, at the slow rhythm of its rise and fall. With all that was wrong in him, if she looks away, he might stop breathing.

Kana isn't finished. "A greenstick fracture in his leg was was also repaired. No long-term effects there, either. He should just be here until his lungs recover a bit more "

This is too much. It's too much for one person to sustain and come out whole. Kana seems sure of herself and Cassian's prognosis, but Jyn doesn't trust her. She doesn't want to hope and have it ruined. She thanks Kana woodenly and leaves. She knows where he is, and that he's alive. She won't come back.

 

 _That_ resolution lasts around eight standard hours, until it's the middle of the night on Yavin and she can't sleep. She was assigned a top bunk in the barracks and she hates it. It feels too high, too exposed. Peering over the edge reminds her of the data tower, and sometimes she thinks she can see Cassian lying prone on the floor, bleeding out and broken.

The third time she wakes up hyperventilating, she can't help it. She has to make sure he's still alive. So she dresses, steals out of bed, and retraces her steps to the medbay.

The lights are dimmed, but she finds Cassian just as easily and pulls up a stiff, plasteel chair by his side. It's pathetic, but her mind feels quiet and her shoulders relax when she can watch him breathe. She watches his eyes for movement. As much as she wants him to rest, if he woke up he could tell her what to do. She feels like she's in a state of limbo, a part of the rebellion but not. Her instinct is to request immunity, a ship, and fly far away somewhere, with a new name and a new life, but she can't. If she left now, she wouldn't be able to stop wondering what happened to him.

She reaches for his hand, lying on top of the blankets. It's not cold, like she expects. It feels like it did on Jedha, warm and strong. She nearly falls out of her chair when his fingers twitch under hers. Her head snaps back to look at his face and in the dim light she can see his eyelids move and his head roll towards her. Her heart is pounding so hard it might burst and she grips his hand to keep hers from shaking.

His eyes blink open, narrow slits peering at her in the dark. "Jyn?"

It's a hoarse mumble, barely a sound, but she nods and leans forward. "Yes. Cassian, it's me." She tries to meet his eyes, but they're glazed over and unfocused. "We lived, we're alive, and you're going to be okay."

He frowns. "You. Okay?"

She nods again. "Yes, Cassian. I'm– Bodhi saved us. I'm okay. How are you? How are you feeling?"

He squints. "Dizzy." He lets out a breath, almost a sigh. "Tired."

Her throat feels tight. "Yes. You're on–" She glances at his IV. "They gave you a lot of drugs. You'll feel better soon." She remembers a list of unpronounceable words on his chart and resolves to look them up.

He closes his eyes and murmurs something else.

She leans closer. "What's that?"

"Stay?"

"Of course." She pulls her chair closer and squeezes his hand. "Of course."

 

* * *

 

She wakes up to bright lights and the high-pitched scream of an alarm. Her neck is stiff from sleeping sitting up, and there's probably an imprint of Cassian's sheets on her face. There are warning lights flashing and medics are running frantically back and forth. Two of them approach Cassian's bed and begin to move him onto a repulsion stretcher.

Jyn panics and pulls back on the mattress. "What's happening? Where are you taking him?"

The medics look irritated. "The Death Star's approaching, miss," one of them says. "We're evacuating the medbay. All other personnel are to report to their posts."

Jyn isn't officially a part of the Rebellion. She doesn't have a post. Somewhere, her heart aches for Bodhi, who she imagines in an orange flight suit tucked into the cockpit of an X-wing, but she can't worry about that right now, when they're trying to take Cassian away from her. She grits her teeth. "I need to come with him."

The medic frowns and Jyn suddenly wishes for Kana. "Are you his partner or medical proxy? Only–"

"Yes," she says. "Partner. I'm his– yes." The lie is easy and Jyn stares them down. She won't take no for an answer, she _won't_.

They look like they down't quite believe her, but seem to assume (correctly) that it will be less trouble to give in.

 

Barely an hour later, Jyn's on the Rebellion's medical frigate, dodging medics and 2-1Bs. Cassian must've been drugged again, because he sleeps through the entire process. He doesn't even wake up when he's moved onto a new bed. A medic reattaches him to machines with various wires and tubes, frowns at something on a screen.

Jyn watches him rummage around and press an oxygen mask to Cassian's face. It reminds her of Saw and she flinches.

The medic barely looks at her. "Sometimes sedation depresses the breathing."

"Okay." She hates how it comes out high-pitched and unsteady.

The medic doesn't seem to notice.

When he leaves, she's alone again in the medbay. She can see Yavin IV below her out the big bay window, but not Massassi Base. The ship has moved to the other side of the planet, so she can't see the Death Star in a partial eclipse. She briefly regrets her decision not to stay and fight, but the feeling fades quickly. She can't fly an X-wing, and she's no soldier. What good would she be back there?

She steals a datapad and hacks into the Rebellion's main logs.

She has to sit to process the news. There's a report from command that the rumors are true. The princess is alive, apparently rescued by a smuggler and a Jedi. The plans were retrieved from an R2 unit and her father's weakness in the Death Star identified.

She bites her nails until they bleed as she watches the growing list of X-wings shot down in the dogfight. Holds her breath when the Jedi makes that impossible shot.

She only lets it out when it's confirmed, the destruction of her father's life's work.

She leans over Cassian's bed. "See?" she murmurs. "Your team didn't die for nothing. Baze and Chirrut didn't die for nothing. We did it."

He doesn't move, doesn't stir, and she feels tears of frustration at the corners of her eyes. He has to wake up again, he has to be okay. He has to know his sacrifice was worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading/kudos/comments/bookmarks! 
> 
> Updates will be slower than my usual due to long chapters and life-y things. But I promise I will finish it :)


	2. Unfinished Business

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! Way after this was promised…… I shouldn't make promises during the semester :/

Jyn's assigned a new room on the _Redemption_ by a harried quartermaster on his way to a transport shuttle. Apparently the princess is holding some sort of medal ceremony. Jyn declines an offer to go. She's dead tired, and doesn't see the point. So she stumbles to her room– little more than a closet with only a desk, a bunk, and a single footlocker, but at least it's her own and the bed is low.

She can't find it in her to drag herself to the 'fresher down the hall, so she just strips down to her underclothes and collapses onto the bed. She lies awake in the dark and thinks about numbers. The population of Alderaan was approximately two billion. She can't imagine the Death Star operational with less than a million. It's a testament to how numb she feels that the thought of all those people dead barely makes her mouth twitch down. She wonders if this was how her father would have felt, or if it was better that he died on Eadu– before he could calculate how many lives he was responsible for.

She closes her eyes to the figures that seem to swirl above her head. It's useless to think of all this now. He's dead. And so are Chirrut and Baze and Saw and Melshi and Sefla and Tonc and too many others. Cassian's lingering at the edges. Sometimes she feels half-dead, too. Like everything since she woke up has been a dream.

Maybe they really died on the beach and they're just ghosts now, lingering because they have unfinished business.

Jyn doesn't know how long it's been when she re-emerges and drifts down the corridors back to the medbay. She hopes it wasn't long. It didn't feel like long. Her eyes are still raw and her body feels heavy. Although perhaps that's just grief.

She wonders if Cassian will be awake, and if he'll be angry that she didn't stay like she said she would. It was hard to know what he meant, back when he asked. She hoped it meant _stay with me while I recover_ , not _stay with me in the Rebellion_. She could only faithfully promise the former. But if Cassian asked the latter, with his soft, accented voice and warm brown eyes, she wasn't sure she'd be able to say no.

 

Cassian's in a room with three other beds, but they're all unoccupied right now. Kana stands at the foot of his, making notes on a datapad. Jyn breathes a sigh of relief and hurries over.

Kana's tired lips twitch up. "You're just in time. He should be coming out of sedation soon."

"Really?"

She nods. "You can help him walk around a bit if he wants."

Jyn has no doubt he will.

"He should be released in a day or so."

Jyn blinks, remembering the long list of Cassian's injuries. "So soon?"

Kana shrugs. "It'll take longer to regain his strength, but there's no reason he can't do that on light duty."

"He'll hate light duty." Another thing she just _knows_. He'll go crazy grounded, walking around the base with nowhere to go. She bites her thumbnail and hopes Bodhi can be there for him. He'd be much more reliable than she ever could.

Kana gives Jyn a final, weary smile and steps back. "I have to go." She hesitates and her eyes drop to Jyn's kyber crystal, hanging loose outside her shirt.

Jyn grabs at it, wondering what she has the strength to say, if Kana asks any questions.

But she doesn't, just inclines her head and says, "May the Force be with you."

Jyn passes the time by reading and rereading the chart at the end of Cassian's bed. She tries to understand the treatments he had and the drugs he's on. She begins to look up some of the drugs and terminology. They've reduced his dose in the past few days, although he's still on quite a cocktail of painkillers and anti-inflammatory meds.

She's so engrossed in reading about each drug, its potential side effects and bad combinations she almost doesn't notice when Cassian stirs.

"Jyn."

She nearly drops the datapad in her haste to move to his side. He turns one of his hands and she grasps it. Her other hand floats up to touch his face or his hair, but she pulls back at the last minute. What if that's too intimate? What if it's too much? It drops awkwardly back to her side and she settles for squeezing his hand.

"Cassian." She wonders how many times they'll meet like this. Murmuring each other's names in the medbay. There are so many other things she wants to say, but all that comes out is, "I'm glad you're back."

"You stayed."

"I did." His eyes can't seem to focus on anything, no matter how she tries to find his gaze. "You'll be better soon. You're going to get out of here."

"Good," he murmurs. "That's good."

She expects him to perk up a little at the news, but he doesn't. He just looks at her, blinking slowly. She leans closer, fear curling cold in her chest. "Are you feeling okay?"

"Yeah." It's barely more than a whisper. "I'm fine." He seems to be slipping back asleep, which worries her even further. Kana implied he would stay awake, possibly have enough energy to get up.

"Are you sure?"

His head bobs up and down. "Just tired." He takes what she thinks is going to be a deep breath, but he seems to lose the energy for it halfway through and it ends up a short little sigh.

She shakes her head. "But you're supposed to get up today. You're supposed to get better."

"Don't worry," he says. "I will." His eyes are falling closed again. "Please don't worry."

She stands, lets go of his hand. "I'm getting a medic."

"Wait."

She leans over him. "What is it?" Her heart is pounding.

"You're not–" His eyes are twitching back and forth across her face, as if he's searching for something. "Don't leave."

He almost looks frightened, and she wonders if he's looking for comfort in _her_. The thought is absurd. She doesn't think she can be a comfort to anyone, especially not him. He looks thin and fragile on the bed below her, and she's afraid that if she moves the wrong way, she'll break him.

So she just squeezes his hand again before turning away to find Kana. "I won't."

 

Kana calls two other medics over and they flock around Cassian's bed, draw a curtain around him, and push her out of the way.

It's ironic, she thinks, that he keeps asking her to stay, when it feels like he's always on the brink of leaving her. She hates it– it tears her apart more than nearly anything else to watch him hover like this between alive and not. She hates to hope. She spent too much of her life running from it. But now she can't help but hope for him and she's afraid it will destroy her.

She stands off to the side and tries not to get in their way, but she's panting, like she can't get enough air. Her vision begins to tunnel, and she can feel the walls getting closer. He's dying. He's leaving. She knows, and it isn't _fair_ , after everything that's happened, for him to go like this, fading away in a medbay bed.

She blinks and the world reopens when Kana presses a canteen into her hands. "Breathe," she says. "Drink this."

She obeys and does her best to pretend she's unaffected. She nods to Kana and tries to find the feeling of her feet on the floor.

"He has pneumonia," Kana says gently, like she's talking to a child. "It happens sometimes after surgery."

"I understand." The room comes slowly back into focus. "He– he'll be okay, then."

"Yes." Kana reaches out as if to stroke her arm, then pulls back. "He'll be in the medbay a bit longer, but we'll take care of him."

"Okay." Jyn takes a deep breath. "Okay."

 

* * *

 

Since she left the surface of Yavin IV no one seems to care what she does with her time, so she gives up on pretending to work for the rebellion. She sleeps when she has to, eats nutrient bars swiped from the medics' canteen when she's hungry, comms Bodhi with periodic updates, and sits with Cassian while he recovers.

She reads him the Rebellion news. Of course, he's fascinated by the report the Princess filed on her rescue by the smuggler and the farmboy-turned-jedi. Jyn reads him the entire thing, supplemented with details about the Skywalker kid in comms from Bodhi, who seems to have made some new friends.

"He's doing well," she says. "The pilots love him."

"Good," Cassian says. Careful of the IV, he turns onto his side so he's facing her. "You said this Jedi's from Tatooine?"

"Yeah, of all places. Are you okay?" He looks tired, and she wonders if she should leave so he can get some sleep. He's been running a steady fever that seems to do little besides exhaust him and has a wet, hacking cough that pulls at his ribs and keeps him up at night.

"I'm fine." He answers immediately before his eyes flick up to her. "Are you?"

She sighs. "I'm okay." He shouldn't be worrying about her.

"Really?"

"Yeah." She's lonely and isolated. She feels trapped and caught between her instinct to run and her need to make sure he's all right. But physically, she's fine. So she pretends that's what he means. She's been doing that a lot.

He looks like he might want to press her on it, but he seems to change his mind. "How's the evacuation going?"

"They should be done by the end of Yavin's day," Jyn says, glad of the distraction. Earlier, while he was sleeping, she could see the column of transport shuttles rising to the Rebellion's main flagship. Bodhi will be up there soon, although he promised to visit them on the medical frigate when he got a chance.

He huffs a short, aborted sigh. "Draven hasn't commed."

Jyn feels her jaw flex. "Why would he do that? You're still recovering." She's being short with him. She knows he's frustrated– he hates feeling useless tired all the time, but she can't help it. The reminder of his connection to Draven makes her wildly angry all over again, and she has to work to keep it from her face.

"I'll be better soon," Cassian says.

"But you're not now," she says without thinking.

He looks away and she can tell he's upset. 

She stands and pushes oily strands of hair behind her ears. "Sorry," she mutters. "I should go." She shouldn't have thrown that back in his face.

"No." Cassian's cold hand catches her wrist. "No, I'm sorry."

There's a long pause as she feels the warmth of her skin seep into his palm. He's staring at her, and she stares back at him, waiting for something.

"I'm sorry," he says again. Even quieter, "Please stay."

He keeps saying that, over and over, like each time she listens is the last. She relaxes slowly back into her chair and he releases her wrist. "Okay."

 

Eventually, she has to leave to eat and shower. Cassian insists she get a few hours' rest in her own bed as well, so she collapses on her bunk after a minimum amount of time spent in the crappy communal sonic and falls into a heavy, dreamless sleep for more hours than she means to. It's exhausting, she realizes, to worry this much about someone.

The halls are busier when she finally makes her way back to Cassian's room, and when she passes a window she can see they're in hyperspace. It's odd, not to know where she's going and who's at the helm, but she's not so worried. There are more important things right now.

She stops short when she sees his door is open. Someone else has beaten her and she feels a sudden, unexpected surge of jealousy. She realizes she's not used to this– having to compete with someone for his attention. The feeling is unpleasant and unwelcome and she shoves it down, ignores the bitter taste in the back of her mouth.

When she sees Draven standing at the foot of Cassian's bed she wants to hurl her datapad at him. Her fingers clench around the screen and her teeth snap shut. She never should have left.

Draven hears her and turns.

She doesn't bother trying to smooth her face into a more neutral expression. "What are you doing here?"

"Simply checking on the recovery of one of my officers." His face is blank, reveals nothing. She _hates_ that look. It feels like something's being held over her head, and she can't trust it or the person behind it.

Cassian's sitting up, and he shifts on the bed. "Jyn, it's–" He's cut off by a fit of coughing and she brushes past Draven to prop up his bed so he can lean back and breathe easier.

"He's fine," she says to Draven. "Still recovering." _Not for you to order around_.

Draven stares at her hand, still resting on Cassian's back. "I see you haven't deserted yet," he says.

His tone is nothing special, he could've been commenting on the weather, but Jyn's vision begins to tunnel and she takes a step towards him. "What."

"It was only expected," he says.

He doesn't know what he's doing. Jyn's hands are already curled into fists and her muscles are so tense they're almost vibrating. She can faintly hear Cassian's weak, wheezing protests, but they're muffled and far away.

Draven continues, "When you refused an official transport off-planet."

Jyn takes another step forward. How _dare_ he? How dare he issue the order that killed her father, then wonder why she refuses to join them?

"I assumed you preferred to simply steal a ship of your choosing. No need to bother with pesky official channels."

He's openly mocking her now, probably looking for a reaction, but she doesn't care. She lunges toward him and aims a fist at his face. He dodges easily and catches her wrist. He lets go with a grunt of pain when she kicks his shin, then steps back. She advances, not sure what brawling with Draven will accomplish but eager to do so anyway. She's satisfied to see he looks mildly alarmed, which hopefully means he's severely alarmed under his stupid fucking spy mask.

Then Cassian starts coughing again and her head whirls back to him. She relaxes her stance– she's being selfish, seeking her own petty revenge and upsetting him when he should be focused on healing.

Too late, she feels Draven's hands on her wrists again, then the snap of handcuffs behind her back.

She curses him in every language she knows as he shoves her towards the door. "Perhaps it's time you learned some discipline, Erso."

 

* * *

 

The _Redemption_ 's brig looks barely used– more of a smaller-than-usual bunk than anything else. Jyn's been in worse prisons and is long past being particularly bothered by the prisons themselves, but this time she _knows_ it's for Draven's vain sense of victory over her.

He's made sure there's no sort of panel on the interior that would give her access to any wires or computer systems, but even if there was, she's not sure she'd be that eager to slice her way out. There would be no point– she's still stuck on this ship, and she still can't leave Cassian's side.

Her prison is much larger than this cell, and Draven knows it. He's trapped her here to prove it to her, and it works. She feels like a dewback whipped into submission, ashamed to hold its head up, all resistance beaten out of it. So when she's released by an apologetic soldier with an intelligence badge on his jacket, it's hard to shake the feeling of defeat.

 

Unsure (again) of how much time has passed, she makes her way back to Cassian's room in a daze, half-hoping he's still there and half-hoping he's not. She holds her breath when she sees the door open, but lets it out in a rush when she sees that the person who's beaten her here is Bodhi.

Her entire body slumps in relief and she nearly collapses into his arms when he embraces her. She wonders if he knows where she was, but he doesn't bring it up and neither does she.

When they part, she can see Cassian on the bed behind him, but not lying down. He's sitting on the side, hands beside him and flat on the sheets, as if he was about to get up or just sat down.

Bodhi speaks before she can ask. "Cassian walked today!"

"That's great." She's too tired to act half as excited as Bodhi, but she offers Cassian the best smile she can come up with.

His head ducks, probably in embarrassment. Probably because such a basic thing is being treated like a major accomplishment. She notices his hair's grown out and it's long enough to flop over his forehead and hide his eyes. He doesn't move to push it back, and she wonders if he's doing it on purpose.

"So h-how are you?" Bodhi says. "After… uh…"

She turns sharply away from Cassian. "I'm fine."

Bodhi jumps. "That's– that's great. Are you g-going to… what are you going to do?"

"I don't know." She feels bad for sounding curt, but she doesn't know what else to say, how to put him at ease.

Bodhi looks nervous, but also like he wants to press her more, when his comm dings. "I'm sorry. That's W-wedge. I have to get back to Home I." He hesitates, then gives Jyn another hug and waves to Cassian. "I'll s-see you guys soon!"

Cassian waits until he's out of sight to speak. "I'm sorry about Draven."

"It's fine." She takes a few steps forward to get a better look at him. He no longer seems feverish, which is good, but he still looks tired. He's also thinner than she remembers, but she hopes it's just an effect of the loose medbay clothes.

"You could report him," he says. "Even command can't do that to Alliance personnel without going through the proper channels."

She goes still when she realizes what he's assumed. "Well, I'm not technically Alliance personnel." She raises her chin. "So Draven has nothing to worry about."

Cassian goes still as well, although she can see his fingers twitch briefly on the sheets, and she knows he's trying to conceal his reaction, whatever that is. "I see."

His restraint makes her stomach clench and she feels even more defensive. "I'm just not ready," she says.

He looks up. "I understand." He sounds sincere, but his face is so perfectly blank she _knows_ he's hiding something.

"Thanks." But she smooths her face as well, as much as she can. If he's not giving anything away, neither is she.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand here's the medical drama everyone was waiting for! 
> 
> Thank you for reading!! Kudos and comments and bookmarks are love <33


	3. I'll Be Waiting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …I have no excuses. Basically, chapter 4 was difficult to write and I felt like no one was reading this so I took prompts to make myself feel better and went back to the one-shot game for a while. Then when I came back to it chapter 4 just kept going and going (it's still not done– I had to split it up)
> 
>  _Anyway_ , for like, the five of you who are still reading this, here's chapter 3, now out of 6!
> 
>  
> 
> On another note: I'll be playing it kinda fast and loose in terms of medical accuracy- call it space medicine! (Chris this means you)

Cassian's frowning when she meets him outside the examination room two weeks after his official release from the medbay. She follows him through the corridors of the _Redemption_. She refuses to return to Home I until he's cleared for duty.

"What did they say?" she says, although she already knows from his silence.

He shakes his head. "Still no."

"That's okay. You just need a little more time."

They pause in front of a turbolift. "I've had time." He pushes the button to take them to the outpatient wing. "My back is fine. My leg is fine. I can work. I can be useful."

Jyn doesn't argue, but presses her lips together as they wait. He's not acknowledging it, of course, but they both know why he's been denied again. His stamina is still not where it has to be– she can see it in the way he's been slow to regain muscle and tires too easily.

He's on light duty– confined to working the comms on the _Redemption_ between physical therapy and long periods of free time. It's supposed to be for resting but Jyn knows he actually uses it for additional training, trying to force himself back into shape.

She can tell he's angry that his "diligence" is not paying off, but she hopes the repeated denial of medical clearance will eventually convince him to back off a bit, maybe realize that pushing himself will not be worth it.

She tries to scrutinize him out of the corner of her eye as they step into the turbolift. She watches his shoulders in particular, to see if he's breathing too heavily. It's something she's noticed– how quickly he gets out of breath. His cough also hasn't completely faded yet. It's not so common– coming back in the evenings or early morning, but he can't seem to shake it and it hasn't receded further in almost a week.

She talked to Kana about it, but the medic was unhelpful.

"They removed his spleen," she said, voice crackling through the comm. "It'll take a bit longer for him to completely clear the infection."

"Can't you give him something else?" Jyn said. "More medicine or something?"

"We've given him all we can without promoting drug resistance. He'll be okay with rest and time. You'll just have to be patient."

Jyn disconnected at that. She didn't want to hear about _patience_ again. She's tired of waiting, tired of ambiguity.

She glances up to Cassian's face, searching for signs he's improving. That all this will be worth it soon. But he looks haggard in the light of the turbolift. She wants desperately to bring up _rest_ again, but thinks better of it. There's been an edge between them since he was released, the tension newly palpable, and most times their conversations devolve into snapping.

So she swallows her concern and decides, again, to wait for a better time. He's always cross after seeing the medics. 

 

She only means to wait a few hours, maybe talk to him about it at dinner, but he's gone by the time she arrives at the mess hall and she doesn't try to find him in his quarters, hoping he's already asleep. She wonders if he's avoiding her, because she doesn't see him again for most of the next day.

When she finally does see him, it's an accident. She's on her way to the training room, looking to work the knots out of her neck after hours bent over a datapad when she sees him outside the door, looking frustrated.

"Let me in," he says as soon as he sees her.

"What?"

His fists are clenched. "I'm locked out. They took away my access."

Good. "Maybe they're right."

His face darkens. "I need to train if I'm going to get over this."

"You need to _rest_." It's still not the right time, but she can think of nothing else to say. "Maybe– you just need to give yourself a break."

He glances at her bag. "You're about to go in. You can't stop me from following you."

She could, but they both know she won't. And she hates that he can see that. Her jaw flexes and she raises her chin. "Actually, I don't feel like working out anymore."

"Fine." He's angry, but his face doesn't reveal anything else, smoothed into a flat, perfect mask. She hates this tension that's cropped up between them, where it feels as if they're each speaking a language the other doesn't understand. 

"So you must be feeling better," she says. "If you were going to train today." She can't hide that she's goading him, but she doesn't care.

"I did," he says. "But this conversation is giving me a headache." He steps past her and stalks away down the corridor.

She grinds her teeth together against a scream and goes into the training room. She spends most of her time on the sand-filled dummy, kicking and punching it for all she's worth. It's hard to picture what she's actually angry at– Cassian or the Rebellion or the whole gods-damned situation, but whatever it is, she makes sure it's beat to Mustafar and back.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Cassian's already at a table when Jyn shows up at the small cafeteria for breakfast. She doesn't ask to sit down across from him. They're not children. They can talk this out.

Or they can sit in rigid silence.

She'd like to reach across the table and shake him, or yell and demand to know what he's thinking. Neither of these will do a thing to break through whatever wall he's constructed, but she doesn't have any idea what will.

"How's your head?" she says. She's not sure what she expects him to say, but she perversely hopes it'll at least make him angry. She's not disappointed.

"It's fine." He's lying. She's been watching him twitch every time someone puts down their tray too hard and there's a persistent furrow in his brow.

"Good." She glances down at his food. "Not hungry?"

His lips pinch and he eats another spoonful of… whatever is passing for breakfast, but it looks like he's forcing himself.

She looks more closely at him. He looks pale, she decides, and exhausted– too tired for this early in the day. She wishes she could ask if the cough still keeps him up, but there's no point– he'll just lie again. "When's your next appointment with Kana?"

"Today." His fingers tighten on his spoon. "Vaccinations."

Another thing he hates. The extra inoculations are a reminder of the loss of his spleen. "Good," she says.

His face darkens. "Is there something you want to say?"

"No." She looks away and eats several large spoonfuls of breakfast. He watches, and she gestures to her bowl. "It's good," she says. "You should try it."

"I'm full."

"After two bites?"

"I had more than that."

"Sorry. Two and a half." She takes another unnecessarily large bite of breakfast, swirls it around in her mouth before swallowing, then drags her tongue slowly up the spoon.

She's almost to the top when Cassian snaps. "Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"You know what."

"Only if you stop it, too."

"I'm not doing anything."

"Bantha-shit." She drops the spoon. "Look me in the eyes and tell me you feel _just fine._ "

His lip curls. "Why? Because you suddenly care so much?"

She slams her palms onto the table, so hard their silverware jumps. "What in _kriff_ gave you the impression I don't care?"

His face goes blank again. "You don't have to humor me."

Her mouth falls open. She's finally honest and he thinks she's lying? "Fine." She stands and picks up her unfinished tray. "I won't." She doesn't look back as she leaves.

 

She spends several hours stewing at her workstation. Cassian never exactly invites her to his appointments, but it doesn't matter because she just slices into his medical records and meets him outside the outpatient offices to ambush him for news. But for the first time, she doesn't go digging. If he's so set on believing that she doesn't care, then she won't bother.

Of course, this time there is news.

"I'm sorry to disturb you."

Jyn feels her chest clench when Kana's voice comes through her comm.

"I just thought you'd want to know."

Jyn waits. It feels to hard to speak, to acknowledge this is happening again.

"Cassian was admitted. He's in the same room as before if you want to visit. Although he shouldn't be here long–"

Jyn hangs up and leaves her workstation without permission.

It's pneumonia. Again. Far away, Kana tries to tell her how this happened– something about it coming on so slow he didn't notice, but Jyn knows better. If he wanted to notice, he would have.

So she stares, unfocused, over Kana's shoulder and decides Cassian knew he was sick and elected to ignore it. But she can't bring herself to be angry with him now, so bitterness curls in her stomach as she pushes it down and sits by his bed, looking at all the monitors she's learned how to read.

 

By mutual, unspoken agreement, their argument is put on hold while Cassian's ill. On his part, Jyn decides it's the fever, or exhaustion, that weakens his walls a bit. His face is more readable, whether it's on purpose or not, and when they speak he sounds more open, almost sincere.

"I'm sorry," he rasps.

"For what?"

"For not saying anything." He doesn't elaborate, because she knows what he means. He's sorry for not telling her how bad he felt, or for letting it come to this. And it's not fair of him to ask forgiveness now, when she's so worried about him.

"It's okay." She forgives him anyway, for everything. She can't help it.

"Thank you for coming."

"Of course."

"I'm glad you… I'm glad you're here."

She nods and tells him to rest his voice. The medics gave him medicine to help him cough out the fluid left in his lungs, but it tore up his throat and his voice is almost completely gone.

The cough scares her. It's loud and violent and so painful he can't hide it from her. He holds his ribs and curls up on his side during the worst of it while Jyn watches and feels helpless.

He gets worse quickly and there are two long, frightening days when the medics talk about ventilators and chest tubes, but things seem to turn around before they can make a decision. Cassian comes slowly back to lucidity and everyone begins to breathe easier.

"He's out of danger now," Kana says, making notes on his chart while he sleeps.

"Why was he in danger again in the first place?" Jyn says from the center of the room, where she's taken to pacing in an attempt to burn all her nervous energy.

Kana shakes her head. "We can't control everything."

She has no patience for Kana's reassurances anymore. "You were _supposed_ to take care of him."

Kana's jaw tightens and she replaces Cassian's chart. "We are. And he's getting better. You'll just have to wait."

Jyn watches her leave, then turns when she hears Cassian shift on the bed. His eyes blink slowly open and he watches as she takes a deep breath and returns to his side. She softens her face and leans close, adjusts the blankets around his shoulders.

"How are you feeling?" she says.

"Like kriffing shit." He takes an unsteady breath, but doesn't cough, and offers an shaky smile. She's so glad to see it her lips twitch up even though he looks terrible and her mind is buzzing from the stress.

"You look it," she says, and puts her hand on his warm, unshaven cheek. Careful physical boundaries have faded as she became desperate to assure herself that he's not fading away in front of her, like he does in her latest nightmares.

He sighs. "So do you."

She huffs a laugh because he's right. Her hair is stringy and feels plastered to her scalp and her eyes are sticky and cold.

His hand comes up to cover hers and it's so cold the hair rises on her arms. She turns her palm over so she can grasp it, then unfolds her other arm so she can take his hand between hers and begin to rub some warmth back into it.

Cassian smiles wider, chuckles, then coughs but he doesn't pull his hand away, even when Jyn's arms get tired and she rests her elbows on the edge of his bed.

She stays like that, feeling the solidity of his hand between hers, pressed together near her face like she's praying. For the first time in recent memory, the ground feels solid under her feet and she feels peaceful and safe.

The relief crashes over her in sudden, overwhelming wave and she grips his hand tighter. Cassian doesn't say anything, just watches her with eyes a bit sunken but still so warm as her face pinches and tears leave tracks down her jaw and drip onto the sheets.

 

* * *

 

"This is ridiculous," Cassian mutters. "I'm not a child."

Jyn watches him pace from where she's slouched in the room's small desk chair. Barely a week after his latest release, Cassian's already going stir-crazy.

"They're just doing their job," she says.

"I'm not a child," he repeats. "And I don't need a curfew."

Jyn sighs. He's almost impossible to talk to like this, fixated on something he's convinced he can control. "They want you to get more rest," she says anyway. "It's good for you."

He stops when she speaks and turns to look at her, brow furrowed and fingers curled in frustration. "Locking me in my room can't make me sleep."

"Maybe not," she says. "But it should limit your options."

"I'm not tired," he says.

She rolls her eyes.

"I'm not."

"Well, just lie down anyway. Try to relax." She reaches out and grasps his arm, tries to pull him to the bed.

He tears his arm away. "No, I can't fall asleep like this. I can't relax when I haven't _done_ anything."

"You worked."

"For three hours, in comms."

"You went to the droid bay."

"A waste of time." He finally sits on the bed and runs his hands through his hair. "There's nothing there I can use for Kay." He looks up. "I need to get back to the Rebellion."

She tries not to grind her teeth. "You're still with the rebellion."

"But I can't _do_ anything."

"Not yet."

"I should be there now."

"Kana doesn't think so."

He sits back and looks carefully at her. "And you think she's right?"

Jyn's shoulders tense. This feels like a trap. Then again, she always feels like she's tiptoeing around _something_.

"Jyn?"

She's been quiet for too long. "I think…she's being cautious. I mean, she's a medic."

"She's being _too_ cautious."

Jyn tries very hard to keep her face flat. Either she fails or he sees right through it.

"You don't think so?"

"It's not important what I think."

It's too late. "You agree with her."

She steps back. If he wants a fight, she's not about to give it to him. "I didn't say that."

"But you do."

"I should go. It's getting late." She turns to open the door.

"Fine."

She hardens herself to the bitterness in his voice. "Fine."

 

She doesn't see him in the cafeteria the next day, and when she can't find him in the droid bay or in comms, she figures he's avoiding her. She understands– she'd do the same thing. He's stressed out and restless, he just needs some time to cool off. Then they can go back to their usual… whatever that is. They seem to swing so fast between near codependence and icy distance she gets whiplash, and it's hard to know which is real.

Every time he's been sick, she's spent her every waking moment by his side, talking softly to him when he was awake, holding his hand as he slept so he knew she was there. In between, he closes himself off, seems to hold her at arm's length, while she's left stranded on the outside, ashamed of sticking around, waiting for something she's beginning to think will never come.

She starts thinking about running again, how easy it would be to steal a light freighter. Something small and not too hard to fly. Perhaps it would be easier to tear herself away now, while she's convinced Cassian won't miss her.

Bodhi calls that night, while she's lying in bed wide awake, trying to think about how free she'd be if she left, and not about how lonely. It's the first time he's made contact in weeks, but she doesn't have the heart to be angry at him– she's happy he's busy, that he's made a life for himself in the rebellion.

"They've found a new location for a base," he says. "They're sending out scouts now and the first build crew in a few days." His stutter is almost completely gone.

"That's exciting."

"Yeah." He paused. "I was w-wondering…"

"Wondering what?"

"If you and Cassian would… would be coming down. If maybe… he was ready."

"I don't think so." Jyn shifts uncomfortably in her bed. She wonders if Cassian knows about this.

"Really? I th-thought he was doing better."

"He was. He is."

"Was?"

"He had a… a relapse, I guess."

"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. I should've visited–"

"He's on the mend."

"So he'll come to the base?"

"I don't know."

"Can you ask? It's not that I don't like the sentients here, I just… m-miss you guys, I guess."

"I miss you, too." Jyn swallows around a pang of shame at her thoughts of running away. As unsure as she is about Cassian, she knows Bodhi would be hurt. It would be cruel to leave _him_ , at least, without saying goodbye.

There's a pause, until she remembers he asked a question. "Yes," she says. "I'll ask."

He thanks her then yawns, and she wishes him a good night. When the call clicks off, the sudden silence seems accusatory.

 _You should talk to him,_ it says. _Tell him about the new base_. If he's already heard and upset about it, maybe she can help him. If not, he deserves to know anyway, and it might as well come from her.

 

It's getting late, and she almost hopes he doesn't answer when she knocks on his door.

But he does, and he looks tired, but not like he's just woken up, which makes her mouth twitch down. It's late. He should have been sleeping.

She feels a sudden rush of sympathy and Bodhi's news flies out of her mind. "I'm sorry," she says.

He steps back from the door and she enters, looking around for somewhere neutral to sit. "You shouldn't be sorry," he says.

 _You're right_ , she thinks uncharitably. _But I don't know what else to say._

"I'm tired, Jyn," he says. Neither of them have turned on the overhead light, and his eyes look hollow in the glow of the desk lamp.

"I'm sorry." Why does she keep apologizing? None of this is her fault. _Except it is. You led him to Scarif_. _You led him up that tower._

"Stop saying that," he says.

"I– okay." She rubs sweaty palms on her legs. She wonders if Cassian keeps his room warmer than she keeps hers.

"You have nothing to apologize for," he continues. "And when you say that, I think you're apologizing for something you're _going_ to do."

She freezes, and feels the breath rush out of her mouth. She doesn't know how he does it– how he knows what she's thinking at her core, even when she doesn't realize it herself. She finds herself whispering, "I wouldn't do it on purpose."

He gives her a sad, tired look, and sits down on his bed. "Wouldn't you?"

"I wouldn't," she says with more conviction.

He shakes his head and looks down at his lap. "I don't know what you're waiting for."

Jyn looks down as well. If she's honest with herself, calm and somewhat rational, she doesn't know either.

"What do you want, Jyn?"

The sincerity in his voice startles her into honesty. "I– I don't know." She wants him to be healthy. She wants him to be happy. Which means she wants him back in the Rebellion. She tries to fight the expression on her face when she realizes why she's so angry. She wishes desperately she didn't have to choose between Cassian and the Rebellion. She can't bear to stay with the Rebellion, but she can't run from Cassian. Not when he sits in front of her like that, damaged and sick because of her. Unhappy and isolated because of her. She ducks her head further to hide her face.

"Well, when you know," Cassian says, "tell me."

"Okay." They're quiet for a while, and she remembers why she came here. "I just talked to Bodhi."

He looks up, waits for her to continue.

"He says they found a new base."

He nods. "I heard."

"He wanted to know if you… would be cleared to join him on it."

Cassian doesn't respond at first, then in a rare loss of control his face contracts, as if he was in pain. "No." His eyes stay closed and he eases himself onto his side. "I don't think so."

Jyn stands, suddenly worried, but hesitates to approach.

"I'm not getting better," he says. "Kana was right. You were right."

"Are you… what…" Her words sound choked in her throat. What is he _saying?_

"I… I'm still _tired_ , Jyn. All the time. Even when I get to sleep. It's exhausting. I didn't even know that was possible." He rolls onto his back and presses the palms of his hands to his eyes. "And… and there's a pain right here." His hand falls to his chest, right on his ribs where his lung was punctured. "I– I can't breathe right. It's hard to describe."

Jyn gives in and steps toward him. As she gets closer, she sees the flush in his cheeks, feels the sweat under her arms and realizes his room is _definitely_ too warm. She puts a shaking hand lightly on his forehead. "When–"

"It comes and goes," Cassian says. "They don't know what to do." He opens his eyes and looks up at her, pupils wide and sad. "I just wish I could sleep." They close again.

Jyn swallows and her hand clutches at her necklace. The solidity of the kyber grounds her, and she has an idea. "Where's your datapad?" she says, pulling a few blankets over him.

"The desk drawer. Top," he murmurs. "Don't bother searching my symptoms. I've already tried."

"That's not…" Jyn pulls out the datapad and fumbles with the rear holoprojector. It comes on and casts the room in green silhouettes. "That's not what I was thinking." She puts the datapad facedown on the desk and turns out the lamp. "Look."

Cassian opens his eyes and she hangs the kyber crystal over light, and the low ceiling is suddenly covered in glowing green pinpricks.

"My mother did this once," she says. "When I was sick and couldn't sleep. She said I'd been inside too long."

Cassian sighs, soft and shallow. Jyn watches his eyes drift around the ceiling, taking in the entire display. "They could almost be stars."

"Yeah." Jyn looks up with him. The spacing of the dots was never quite even, and she remembers trying to put constellations to the random patterns when she first saw it.

Cassian's quiet for a long time, and for a moment she thinks he fell asleep.

Then he says, "She was right."

"Who?"

"Your mother," he says. "I've been inside for too long." His voice starts to sound pinched, and she looks sharply at his eyes, wet and glowing brighter in the green light. "I feel trapped and–" he swallows, "I don't know if there's a way to get free."

In the dark, she doesn't know if the tears in his eyes spill over and slide down his face. His breathing stays steady, but she doesn't look.

She thinks he's wrong. There is a way to free him– and she'll find it if it's the last thing she does on this Force-forsaken ship. Because if anyone deserves to be truly free, it's Cassian.

 

* * *

 

It's been a while since Jyn's tracked anyone. Back when Saw first left her, she did it a lot. It was easy to find sentients who'd pay you to follow someone, and she got good at it quickly. It's harder and less practical on a medical frigate, where the layout is so bare there's nowhere to hide, and the majority population is medics and patients so it's nearly as hard to blend in.

But she manages. In a way, it feels good, to exercise her mind in a way that feels purposeful. She can feel her senses sharpen and her focus narrow. So she tracks Kana for longer than is strictly necessary to learn her routine– her patients, her regular duties, the cafeteria where she usually eats, even where she sleeps.

An invasion of privacy? Maybe, but Jyn doesn't care, and the look on Kana's face when Jyn surprises her outside a patient's room is well worth it.

She recovers quickly and tries to step around Jyn. "Can I help you?"

"Yes." Jyn chose this particular corridor because it's a dead end and so narrow that when she holds out her arm, she blocks Kana's way out. "I want you to fix him."

Kana's taller, but Jyn knows she's still intimidating and it seems to be working.  She was willing to trust Kana, back when she thought Cassian was improving. But Jyn is officially out of 'patience' and all bets are off.

Kana looks everywhere but Jyn's face, clearly looking for a way out, but afraid to try and force her way through.

"You know what I'm talking about," Jyn says. "Tell me what's wrong with him. _Exactly_." She steps forward on the last word, well within arm's reach.

Kana flinches. "I don't know!" she says. "We're doing the best we can, I swear."

"It's not good enough. He's not getting better and you know why. I know you do."

Kana's face crumples. "It… it was a mistake. We didn't know…"

Jyn's so angry she nearly sees red. They made a _mistake?_ With _Cassian?_ "What didn't you know?"

"We didn't– uh–" Kana swallows. "Um, when he first came in they were really concerned about his back. They were afraid he'd need more cybernetics than we have to repair it if they waited so they rushed the surgery on his ribs."

"What does that mean?"

"It… it wasn't patched up well," Kana says, hunching her shoulders. "His scans show a lot of scar tissue and… it's hard to fix that."

"But you _can_ fix it." Jyn grabs this detail immediately– if there's a chance for Cassian, _any_ chance, she's going to take it, because she knows without any doubt at all that Cassian would want it. And after all he's sacrificed for her she's going to get him what he wants.

Kana dithers. "It's… complicated."

"How complicated?"

"We… would have to generate a new lung for him– or part of one– and our organ generator can be unreliable. There's no guarantee it would work. And if it doesn't it could be… it could be really bad."

"Give me a number," Jyn says.

"What?"

"How likely is it to work? What chance does he have?"

Kana gives a shaky half-shrug. "I– I don't… 50 percent? 55?"

Jyn almost laughs. "There are worse odds than that." And he's beaten them.

"But… the consequences of failure…"

"A risk he'll be willing to take." Jyn can speak with absolute confidence.

"You– you can't speak for him about this."

"Fine." Jyn drops her arm, although Kana doesn't move, still waiting for permission. "Ask him yourself, although you won't hear anything different." She relaxes enough that Kana starts to move hesitantly past her.

"But you'd better tell him," Jyn says when she's a few steps away. "Or I will. And I'll make sure to mention how long you kept this from him."

Kana doesn't look back, but Jyn sees her head bob as she walks away as fast as she can without running.

 

The look on Cassian's face the night before his surgery makes her chest release and her heart leap in a way she doesn't expect but is powerless to stop. A wide smile spreads across her face and she wants to run across his room and embrace him. She knows it would hurt him, so she doesn't, but her smile only grows when she thinks that in two days, it won't anymore.

She sighs and forces herself to sit calmly on the bed next to him. "Excited?" she says.

He nods, and there's a smile on his face she knows he's trying to control. "Very."

She takes a breath. "Nervous?"

"No." He shakes his head and the smile finally breaks onto his face.

"I'm so happy for you." In a fit of courage, she nudges his shoulder with hers. It's a strangely intimate, familiar thing to do, but it feels right and she tries to save the brief feeling of their arms pressed together.

He turns to look at her then. Their faces are so close she can see his eyes skim over her face, searching for something in her expression.

She tries to keep her smile there, although she's starting to imagine life when Cassian's back in the Rebellion. It's hard not to think she'll lose him. Tonight feels like an ending, of sorts. A goodbye. She was never good at goodbyes.

"Will…" he begins to ask something, then stops.

She waits.

"Will you be waiting for me? After?"

Jyn's heart twists at his words. Even after all this time, a part of her's convinced Cassian will eventually leave her. The idea to the contrary is exhilarating and terrifying – to know someone _wants_ her to stay, has _asked_ her to. She wants to say _yes_ unconditionally, sink into his arms and never leave his side, but afraid of what he'll think of her after weeks, months, afraid he'll finally see what made everyone else leave her behind.

"Jyn?" he says when she doesn't answer.

She refocuses on him and he's looking at her like _that_ , the way he did when he shot the man in white, and when he said _Welcome home_. So she says, "I'll still be here." Because she knows that's what he's really asking and for once, she tells the truth.

Her weak, weak heart stutters at the tenderness and relief that creeps across his face and she knows she's lost. Whatever her friction with Draven, whatever her bitterness towards the Alliance, she accepts that she could never leave him.

"I'll stay," she says. "I promise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your patience and your comments/kudos– the next wait shouldn't be nearly as long (oh God we can only hope…)


	4. Anger Management

"Jyn, come on!" Kes shouts from across the frigid hangar.

She ignores him, doesn't even stop as she pulls off her overcoat, tracking mud and industrial lubricant and kriff knows what else across the duracrete floor.

"It's not your fault, you know!" he says. "No one blames you."

She throws an obscene gesture over her shoulder.

Kes groans. "Fine. Throw a tantrum if it'll make you feel better. At least stop at the medbay– that oil is nasty stuff."

"It _will_ make me feel better," Jyn mutters as she stomps toward the sergeant's barracks, where she finds a sonic and a clean coat.

As she stands in the tiny stall, feeling the grease vibrate off her, she counts backward from 10, then 50, then 100, trying to release the knot of anger in her stomach. The mission had gone sideways as soon as they touched down on Kashyyyk (clumsily and in the bush, their landing codes no good) and they spent most of the time trying to salvage it. They returned to base over a standard day later than planned, which meant she missed seeing Cassian by a little more than an hour.

Combined with earlier conflicting missions and their respective duties on base, she hasn't talked to Cassian in almost a standard month. Which makes her want to stab the training room punching bag with her sharpest vibroblade several times over, because isn't he the reason she even _stayed?_ Isn't he the reason she officially joined this Force-forsaken army? 

To feel the lack of him makes her feel needy and dependent and _kriffing furious_. And she was never good at managing her anger. Saw always encouraged her to use it– to fight harder, longer, dirtier. When she was fourteen, one of the other Partisans stole her favorite truncheons, lifted off an imperial officer and perfectly balanced. He lied to her face about it at first, and when she discovered them in his bunk, she beat him with them. Saw did nothing to stop her, said nothing as she gave the man four broken ribs and a concussion.

She felt justified in her anger then, and she feels justified in it now. She feels like she's been lied to again. She stayed, because she promised she would, and she was with him as he recovered from the last surgery, but as soon as he was cleared for duty, he disappeared. He was swept back into the thick of intelligence before Jyn understood what was happening, and she was left with the pathfinders. Or training recruits in hand-to-hand. Or whatever slicing busywork no one else wanted to do.

She's in the sonic for so long it turns off automatically and beeps at her for going overtime. She still smells vaguely of oil, but even the thought going to the medbay for something more thorough is exhausting, so she calls it good.

But Kes was right– the grease from the Kashyyyk refinery never really comes off and she wakes the next morning with hives breaking out on her arms and neck.

The slime to treat it smells like acetone and doesn't freeze in the air on Hoth so it just sits on her skin, getting colder and colder while she snaps at Bodhi. He's trying to teach her how to fix an A-wing, more complicated than anything she's worked on before, and she's frustrated.

He doesn't deserve her spite, but she can't keep the glare from her face– so when Luke comes by he can only give her a quick, awkward smile before starting a conversation with Bodhi about… something. They're both such geeks when it comes to flying it gets technical quickly and she tunes it out. Not that she can really hear them when their faces are so close together.

Her jaw tightens when she notices that. Then she shakes her head and looks away, twisting the next two wires together so aggressively her fingers hurt.

She supposes she's happy for him. He's made friends here. Everyone seems to know his name, including the Princess's inner circle. He always has someone to eat with at mealtimes, or talk to about anything.

Jyn still feels alone somehow, although she doesn't remember the last time she was so consistently surrounded by sentients. Maybe she could make more of an effort– go drinking with the pathfinders, learn the names of the recruits she trains, ask to join Bodhi and his friends at dinner.

But she doesn't. Whatever her rank or her fatigues might say, it never feels quite right, like she's being bent into a shape that's not natural. The Princess yells at Solo all the time for it, but she understands what he means when he insists he's not meant to be here, that this is not his life.

But she never finds the impetus to seek him out, never attempts to confide in him. He doesn't seem the type.

 

As much as Han acts like he doesn't care, Jyn begins to doubt the seriousness of his threats to desert when she sees he's signed up for patrol a week later. Something tells her it might've been a move to impress the princess, but she doesn't much care about his motives as long as he's good on a tauntaun. She's not in the mood to shout instructions on how to get the animal to turn in negative twenty degree weather.

Han tries to make conversation while they're saddling up. "And then she accused me of 'not pulling my weight.' I mean– seriously? Tell me, who brought in the latest shipment of bacta? Who figured out how to fix the east wing generator? What am I doing on _patrol_ for kriff's sake?"

Jyn buckles her helmet and gives a grunt he could interpret to mean anything. Silence would irritate him further, but an actual response would just encourage him. She considers reminding him that his last shipment of bacta was a diluted stock and worth rather less than he insisted, he "fixed" the generator with spacer's tape that peeled off within a week, and he's clearly on patrol to get the Princess to look at him with something other than disdain, but in the end she just mounts her tauntaun and leads the way out of the hangar.

She's not in the mood for his attitude today. According to the intelligence logs (sliced, of course), Cassian's been back for nearly 48 hours and she hasn't seen enough of him to say hello. It shouldn't, but it sets her teeth on edge and shortens her already quick temper. She tells herself she doesn't _need_ him to acknowledge her presence. He's not _obligated_ to her or anything.

But it might be nice. After all they've been through.

Han starts complaining as soon as the cold hits them and Jyn wishes the wind was blowing harder, if only to drown him out. After the third description of just how far his balls were up his ass, she pushes her tauntaun even faster over the ice to put some distance between them.

He doesn't take the hint. "Fuck, Erso, it's not a race." He tries to catch up, gripping the reins with one hand and pulling his scarf farther up his cheeks.

"The sooner we finish, the sooner we're warm," she says without looking back. She braces her thighs and pushes faster, reveling in the burn of her muscles and the cold air in her lungs.

Han yells something else behind her, but she doesn't listen. Let him whine all he wants, he won't interrupt her one taste of freedom in months. She closes her eyes and tries to memorize the feeling, so she can hold onto it when she's back on base, with all its rules and hierarchy and stupid, meaningless tasks–

Then her tauntaun suddenly jerks from beneath her and she's slammed to the ground. The snow cushions her fall for the most part but one of the safeties on her stirrups doesn't release right away and there's a sickening pop in her ankle. She screams before she can help it, then bites it back and grits her teeth against the pain, watching the tauntaun slide away from her, scrambling to find purchase on the icy slope.

Han thunders up behind her. "Holy shavit, I told you it was icy here. You okay?"

"Yes." She glares and gets to her feet, then growls when her ankle can't take her weight and she ends up on her hands and knees.

"Woah, easy." Han maneuvers around her and dismounts, careful to avoid the ice she didn't see until she was on top of it.

With difficulty, Jyn swallows her pride and accepts his hand up, glad her gear hides the flush in her cheeks. Far too easily, Han lifts her onto his own tauntaun, then starts down the hill to where her own is shaking itself off, apparently unharmed.

"You go on ahead," he calls. "Get that leg looked at."

And if it weren't for the horrific smell, Jyn would bury her face in Han's tauntaun's neck because something tells her if anything will get Cassian's attention, it'll be her admission to the medbay.

 

She's right, and she's barely been there five minutes when he shows his face. Her ankle (not broken, just dislocated) has gotten a shot of bacta and is propped up on three pillows with ice, so as much as she would like to spin on her heel and stalk out the door, she's stuck on the bed while he dithers, apparently at a loss of what to say.

She waits for a while, wonders if he'll apologize, but then she gets impatient. "Nice of you to show up."

She's being nasty, and his eyes narrow. "I've been busy."

"For two whole days?"

"There was a lot to do when I got back." He's standing oddly close to the door, like he can't bear to close the distance between them.

"Bantha- _shit_."

His jaw clenches. "Intelligence work can be very demanding."

"Oh, well sorry I'm not worth two minutes of your precious time to _say hello_ when you're back on base."

"I was _going_ to," he says through his teeth. "I just had to–"

"What is it? What is it you _had_ to do?"

"I– I have to focus, Jyn, okay? I'm trying to regain some ground after being on leave."

Maybe that's partly true, and he has the best sabaac face she's ever seen, but she's still convinced he's hiding something. She calls his bluff. "So I'm a distraction?"

"That's not– you're missing the point."

"No, I think _you_ are." She glares and doesn't elaborate. If she has to spell it out for him, he doesn't deserve to understand.

He takes a deep breath and seems to calm down. "Look, I can't apologize for doing what I have to for the Rebellion."

"That's not what I'm asking for." Her voice is suddenly small and angry tears prick at her eyes. She blinks them back, but she knows he saw them and she hates it.

"Then what are you asking for?" His voice is softer too, and he leans over his toes ever so slightly, like he wants to step forward but something is stopping him. "What do you want?"

 _I want you to be honest. I want you to stay. I want you to put me first. I want it to be you and me again_. But she can't tell him that. "I don't know."

Cassian frowns. "Really? Or you just don't want to say?"

 _Fuck_ , how can he always read her like this? She's suddenly very tired, and she doesn't feel like dealing with him or his cryptic expressions and half-truths anymore. "Go away."

"What?" He finally steps forward. "Jyn, I didn't want to argue, I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"I'm fine. Now you can leave."

"Jyn…"

"I said you can leave."

"But I don't–"

She sits up and meets his eyes. "Get out."

He sets his jaw and backs up. "Fine. Have it your way."

And then he's gone.

 

The air between them remains decidedly chilly when she's released, limping around base with a brace and wounded pride.

Bodhi is awkward about it. Every time he's in a room with both Jyn and Cassian, he jumps like a mynock's out to get him and stutters nervously until one of them leaves. If it were up to her, Jyn would put her name on the next to-fly list just to get off the base, but medical still has her grounded and Kes won't let her on the Pathfinders' next mission to Phindar.

"Come on, Dameron, give me a break." She's one step away from groveling, but she doesn't care. She's going crazy, she _has_ to get out of here. "My ankle's _fine_ , you know how medics get."

Kes glances down, where her pants wrinkle around the stabilizer she's still wearing. He shakes his head. "Not this time, Erso. Wait for the next one."

Jyn's terrible at waiting, and she sulks for the next three days until Bodhi agrees to let her tag along on his next supply run.

"It's a long one, all the way out to Phaeda."

She's already packing in her head. "When do we leave?"

"Tomorrow. It's supposed to take over a month– command wants us to skirt the core. Our fuel stop is Savareen."

"Even better." She'll bring a few extra knives, just in case they run into trouble around Hutt Space.

 

* * *

 

As practical as it is, Jyn never really understood the appeal of flying as a profession, but the moment Bodhi's light freighter breaks the atmosphere of Hoth, she feels muscles relax she forgot where tense. She revels in the brief feeling of weightlessness before the artificial gravity kicks in, then in the peace and quiet of the ship. When she lies across the bench behind the cockpit, she can hear nothing but the gentle hum of the ship and Bodhi occasionally adjusting the controls. It's nearly dead silence, and she can feel her mind begin to clear.

Bodhi joins her once they enter hyperspace. He watches her nervously for a bit before speaking. "Feeling better?"

"Yeah." She hesitates, then says, "Thanks for letting me come."

"Of course." He fiddles with his vest. "It's just…"

Jyn closes her eyes and consciously relaxes her jaw. She won't allow herself to redirect her anger at Bodhi. "What is it?"

"This isn't to get back at him, is it?"

"What?"

"You're not… trying to get back at Cassian by leaving with me, are you?"

"That's ridiculous." Before she knows it her hands are in fists and she's already trying to regulate her breathing. "Where did you even get that?"

Bodhi shrugs and looks at the floor. "I don't know. I feel like you guys used to be so close. And now you're… not."

That brings back memories rather too vivid from the _Redemption_ and Jyn feels her chest constrict. Because Bodhi's right, they _used_ to be close.

"I'm sorry," he says.

Jyn wonders when he got so good at reading her.

"I didn't mean to upset you."

"It's not your fault."

"I know."

She jerks her head and tries to meet his eyes, but he stares resolutely at the comms above her head.

"I'm still sorry you're unhappy."

 _I'm not unhappy_ , she almost says. But she swallows the reflex as soon as it occurs because if she should be honest with anyone, it's Bodhi.

"If you want…" his voice lowers, "If you wanted to get off on Phaeda, I wouldn't tell anyone why."

Jyn feels her breath grow ragged when she realizes what he's offering. If she had any sense at all, she'd take it– just walk off the ship, leave the Alliance behind forever, be done with the loneliness and the pain and all the other complicated emotions she has for it.

But when she closes her eyes and pictures leaving– she feels somehow even emptier than before. She pushes off the bench without looking at Bodhi. "I'll think about it."

She won't, and her stomach burns at the lie. But she doesn't want to admit there's more holding her to Hoth than the lack of a ship.

 

Jyn can feel Bodhi watching her out of the corner of his eyes the entire time they're on Phaeda, but she ignores it. He doesn't bring up his offer again and she never sets foot off the ship. She watches the planet disappear below her without any regret, although anxiety starts to build when she realizes the mission's half over and eventually they'll be back on Hoth.

But then they're in hyperspace and Jyn finds some comfort in that. It's easier to ignore all the pressures and fears weighing on her mind when she's moving at the speed of light. When she can look out the portal forget for a few hours that the galaxy exists.

Then Bodhi answers a comm and they drop out after barely an hour.

"What the fuck?" She pulls herself out of a light doze on the bench and slumps back into the copilot's seat.

"We're being rerouted." He's already tapping in new coordinates and checking the hyperspace lanes.

"Why?"

"Emergency extraction. Technically, it's on our way back."

"Technically?"

"We'll… have to go through the core."

Jyn snorts. "Perfect." Right through the core in a cargo ship full of smuggled goods with limited guns and shields like shavit.

"It's an emergency. An agent's about to be compromised. They're sending us the details now."

Jyn's heart sinks, because wouldn't that be perfect if the agent was–

"It's Cassian."

Of course it is. Although in the holo they sent he's clean shaven and wearing an imperial uniform, the name _Captain Cassein Willix_ in bold underneath.

Bodhi scrolls through the file. "He's at the academy on Corulag doing an 'inspection,' but the real inspector's schedule changed and she'll be there before he's due to leave. We're the only ones who can get there in time."

"Where's his damn droid with an escape plan when you need it."

"Jyn." He pushes them into hyperspace on a new course, disapproval in his voice.

"Sorry," she mutters.

He sighs. "You'll… be nice to him, won't you?"

"I'm always nice."

"What about–"

"He was being a _di'kut_."

"I know, but–"

"I'll be nice." Jyn unbuckles her restraints and tries to end the conversation before it goes any further.

But Bodhi won't let it go. "I just don't understand what happened."

Despite herself, Jyn pauses before climbing down to her bunk. If she could explain it, she would, and it would make things a whole lot simpler. But she can't. There's too much. "That makes two of us."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See! It wasn't that long :)
> 
> (Don't hold me to a timeline for the next chapter tho…)

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist  
> "Mess is Mine" - Vance Joy  
> "New Slang" - The Shins  
> "Stay Alive" - José González
> 
>  
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr where I'm [cats-and-metersticks](https://cats-and-metersticks.tumblr.com/)! :)


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